Puckett v. State

Supreme Court of Georgia

May 21, 2018

PUCKETTv.THE STATE.

MELTON, Presiding Justice.

Following
a jury trial, Kevin Randolph Puckett was found guilty of
malice murder, felony murder, and family violence aggravated
assault in connection with the shooting death of his father,
Luther.[1] On appeal, Puckett contends that the trial
court erred in (1) allowing a photograph of certain books to
be admitted into evidence at trial and (2) allowing improper
bolstering of the statements of a State's witness at
trial. Finding no reversible error, we affirm.

1.
Viewed in the light most favorable to the jury's verdict,
the evidence presented at trial revealed that, on April 4,
2008, Puckett returned home in the evening after work to the
house in which he lived with his parents, Luther and Irene.
At that time, Puckett's son, Austin, who was almost three
years old, was also staying at the home. Irene made some
pizza for dinner and brownies for dessert, and she then left
to do some shopping. At some point while Irene was out
shopping, Puckett, who had a turbulent and troubled history
with his father, got into an argument with Luther about the
brownies that Irene had made. Puckett then shot Luther six
times with a semi-automatic Glock 31 .357 handgun, killing
him. Luther was shot through his right eye, right cheek, his
chest, left arm, the right side of his back, and his right
shoulder. Austin heard the argument and witnessed the
shooting.

When
Irene returned from shopping, she found her husband dead and
called 911. When police arrived, Puckett was holding his son
while standing with Irene in the front doorway of the house.
Police asked Puckett to sit down at the kitchen table and to
give Austin to Irene, which he did. Puckett initially told
police that he was not at home at the time of the murder and
that he had taken his son to a Chick-fil-A, but surveillance
footage from the Chick-fil-A and other evidence contradicted
this story, and Puckett later admitted that he lied.

When
Puckett's sisters arrived at the house on the night of
the murder to find out what was going on, Austin told them,
"My daddy shot grandpa pow-pow." Austin also told
Puckett's sisters that Puckett had shot
"grandpa" in the face. Police found a black Glock
handgun in the nightstand beside Puckett's bed that
smelled like it had been recently fired, and testing of the
bullets recovered from Luther's body and the .357 round
shell casings found at the scene revealed that they had been
fired from the Glock found in Puckett's bedroom. Puckett
was arrested on the night of the shooting.

The day
after Puckett's arrest, Austin spontaneously exclaimed to
Irene, "Daddy shot grandpa." Puckett himself also
later admitted following his arrest that he remembered
retrieving his gun from upstairs, shooting the gun, and
hiding the gun when he "realized [that his] father was
dead." Puckett also called one of his sisters after his
arrest and told her, "I didn't mean to kill him. I
only wanted to hurt him." At Puckett's 2012 jury
trial, [2] then seven-year-old Austin testified about
witnessing Puckett shoot his grandfather.

The
evidence was sufficient to enable a rational trier of fact to
find Puckett guilty of all of the crimes of which he was
convicted beyond a reasonable doubt. Jackson v.
Virginia, 443 U.S. 307 (99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560)
(1979).

2.
Puckett claims that the trial court erred by admitting into
evidence a photograph taken by police on the night of
Puckett's arrest that depicted several books on a
bookshelf in Puckett's bedroom. Among the books on the
shelf with titles such as "The Colossal Book of
Mathematics, " "Money, " "Hyperspace,
" "Beyond Einstein, " "Lifetime Guide to
Money, " "Germs, " and "Spycraft, "
were also books entitled "True Crimes" and the
"A to Z Encyclopedia for a Serial Killer." Puckett
claims that this photograph should have been excluded as
irrelevant and as unduly prejudicial, because it did not
provide any specific connection between Puckett and
Luther's murder and because the two crime-related books
depicted in the photo impugned Pucket's character by
implying that he had an interest in killing people.

However,
pretermitting the question whether the trial court erred by
allowing this photograph into evidence, we find its admission
to have been harmless. In light of the overwhelming evidence
of Puckett's guilt, including Austin's eyewitness
account and Puckett's own admission to wanting to hurt
his father and remembering retrieving a gun, shooting it, and
hiding it after realizing that his father was dead, we find
that no harm resulted from the admission into evidence of
this single photograph depicting two crime books among
several other books dealing with different topics. See, e.g.,
McClure v. State, 278 Ga. 411 (2) (603 S.E.2d 224)
(2004).

3.
Puckett asserts that the trial court erred in allowing
improper bolstering at trial of Austin's statements about
Puckett shooting Luther without Austin's veracity having
first been challenged by Puckett on cross-examination. More
specifically, he claims that testimony from a licensed
psychologist who had treated Austin since he was three years
old and to whom Austin had told in 2009 and 2010 that Puckett
had shot Luther should not have been admitted at trial. In
this connection, under Georgia's old Evidence Code, a
witness's prior consistent statements were

admissible only where (1) the veracity of a witness's
trial testimony has been placed in issue at trial; (2) the
witness is present at trial; and (3) the witness is available
for cross-examination . . . . [And] a witness's veracity
is placed in issue so as to permit the introduction of a
prior consistent statement only if affirmative charges of
recent fabrication, improper influence, or improper motive
are raised during cross examination. . . . Thus, to rebut a
charge that a witness is motivated or has been influenced to
testify falsely or that his testimony is a recent
fabrication, evidence is admissible that he told the same
story before the motive or influence came into existence or
before the time of the alleged recent fabrication. In those
circumstances, the prior consistent statement is defined as
not hearsay . . . and thus is admitted into evidence.

Here,
contrary to Puckett's assertion that he did not place
Austin's veracity in issue during cross-examination such
that Austin's psychologist could testify to Austin's
prior consistent statements, the record reveals that he did
in fact do so. Specifically, Puckett raised the issue that
Austin's testimony at trial may have been improperly
influenced by his recent conversations with the prosecutor in
2012 prior to trial. During Puckett's cross-examination
of Austin, Puckett asked Austin about his conversations with
the prosecutor to determine if "anybody [told Austin]
what to say." He also questioned whether Austin might
have been fabricating his more recent story on direct
examination about Puckett using a "black" gun to
shoot Austin's grandfather by asking him whether he
remembered previously telling an interviewer at the Child
Advocacy Center that the gun involved in the incident was
actually a "pink" one rather than a
"black" one. Under such circumstances, we find no
abuse of discretion in the trial court's decision to
allow Austin's psychologist to testify about a prior
consistent statement that Austin made in 2009 to his
psychologist in which he said that Puckett had "banged
[Luther] with a gun" and in 2010 when Austin told the
psychologist "My father killed my grandfather."
See, e.g., Kidd v. State, 292 Ga. 259 (2) (736
S.E.2d 377) (2013).

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In any
event, even if the trial court had erred in allowing the
psychologist to testify about Austin&#39;s prior consistent
statements, the error would have been harmless, as the
testimony was largely cumulative of the unobjected-to
testimony of Puckett&#39;s sisters and Puckett&#39;s mom
about Austin telling them that Puckett had shot Luther. See
Rutledge v. State, 298 Ga. 37, 40 (2) (779 S.E.2d
275) (2015) (no harm from admission of hearsay that was
"largely cumulative" of other properly admitted
testimony). Moreover, Puckett himself admitted to key aspects
of Luther&#39;s shooting, and the evidence of his guilt was
overwhelming. London v. State, 274 Ga. 91, 94 (4)
(c) (549 S.E.2d 394) (2001) ...

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